This display presents diverse artistic expressions of ideas about the human body, drawn from the Gallery’s Collection to complement the Gallery’s exhibition ‘Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams’ (11 June – 2 October 2011). These works consider the human form physically, culturally and scientifically, providing insights into history, knowledge, and memory.

Works by Eko Nugroho, Liu Jianhua and Wang Zhiyuan offer a critical take on social and popular cultural issues, while Fiona Hall and Greg Semu locate fetishism and sexuality as embedded in culturally located practices. An assemblage by Rosalie Gascoigne and collages by Gary Brotmeyer address the fragmentation used by Cubist, Dada and surrealist artists in the early twentieth century; and Sara Tse, Anne Ferran and Justine Cooper each visualise the body as ephemeral, a trace of existence.